Religion of armageddon

Those of us old enough to remember the 1970s may recall when the next ice age was being forecast, which over time became concern about the greenhouse effect/global warming/climate change. Now there are two key dimensions to the issue of global warming:

1. What does the science say?
2. What should be the public policy response to this?

A rational debate around the science is all very well, and should continue, although many would argue it is more likely that there is anthropomorphic global warming than not, the issue may be more a matter of scale. We already know that the issue of scale and speed of any global warming has been contentious. Any rational person would welcome ongoing inquiry into this area, because it informs what comes next.

The public policy response has been my main area of contention, because it has provoked in many a desire for intervention based on regulation, taxation and subsidy, rather than considering how existing regulations, taxes and subsidies are negative in relation to emissions that may contribute to global warming. As most of those concerned about global warming also happen to be on the political left (and as such show little regard for property rights or concern about the growth of the state) it has caused greatest consternation among liberals who see it almost as a convenient excuse for the left to pursue much of its agenda.

After all, hatred of commercial provision of energy, the private car, aviation, industrialisation, consumerism and capitalism predated global warming, as did the worship of inanimate objects, plants and animals OVER humans.

Because whilst some in the environmental movement truly do have good intentions, have genuine concerns and want the world to be a "better place" in ways that many would agree with (less pollution, improved living standards), others have less concern for humans. The ends justify the means for them.

These are the ones who claim to talk the talk of "non violence" but believe in anything but that.

You see they start by fully supporting the violence of the state in enforcing laws to restrict or compel you as they see fit, including to take money off you to give to whoever they want. The idea that non-violence applies at all levels is absolute nonsense.

It is followed by a willingness to undertake the euphemistically called "direct action", which is essentially trespass, vandalism and obstruction to destroy the product of other people's minds and labour or take it over.

Underlying all of this is to deliberately engage in grotesque hyperbole about what will happen with global warming. The underlying message being that we are all doomed unless something is done about it. This scaremongering has little basis in science, every basis in science fiction and is intended to frighten people into following a line of thinking that there should be NO HIGHER PRIORITY than to cut CO2 emissions (only in Western liberal democratic developed countries mind you, not Russia, China, let alone the Gulf states which are by far the world's highest emitters). Emissions become the measure of success, NOT the net impact, not living standards, not life expectancy, but the composition of the atmosphere. Think atmosphere before people.

It matches the economic nihilism of the same people who think economic growth cannot be sustained (based on the false premise that wealth is solely generated from raw commodity discovery and consumption, rather than the application of reason to all available resources) and must be redistributed. The same who have the socialist notion that it is "unfair" that the countries and cultures that embraced capitalism, science and reason above all others first are wealthier than those that did not, and that means wealth should be stolen from the developed countries and given to the developing. The idea that human development and industrialisation should be curtailed and restricted, because it is "killing the planet" (let's depict the planet as something living of course).

Now spreading this Armageddon concept and the urgency of action has proven to be insufficient. Truth be told the environmentalists are terribly unhappy that they have had poor electoral success in most countries, and that the "urgency of action" has largely been seen in governments dabbling in energy, transport and a few other sectors to encourage less emissions. Governments wont wage war on the car, plane, power stations or industry because most people like their car, like to travel, like electrical appliances, like their jobs in such industries or those related to them, and want better living standards.

So scaring people that they will die if they don't act on global warming has failed, because neither voters nor governments are that interested anymore. The next stage is obvious - scare them that their children will hate them and turn on them.

That is where this video came in:



Showing Greenpeace in its true form, as driven by people who show anger and a desire to threaten violence underneath the shroud of panda bears and humpback whales.   Greenpeace is a multi-million dollar business peddling the propaganda of a new global religion that doesn't take kindly to those who point out when it is wrong.

However, it is most clearly seen in the now infamous Richard Curtis video depicting how school-children who want join their fellow drones in the religion can "hilariously" been blown up - Taliban style - like what happened in London, Paris, Madrid, Baghdad, Kabul, Istanbul, Moscow etc. It is part of a campaign called 10:10.



Neither the Green Party of England and Wales, nor Greenpeace have uttered a word about this. All I can say is bravo for scoring a spectacular own goal, and showing that the term eco-fascism is not an exaggeration. Name a situation when it is funny to show a teacher blowing school students up like a bomb for not agreeing with the teacher or the rest of the class.

Of the businesses that deserve to be pilloried for supporting this, the list of O2, Kyocera and Sony, can also include the Royal Mail and Adidas.

I don't expect the British Con-Dem government to respond, led as it is by a man who made a point of joining the Conservatives to the global warming religion, and with a coalition partner that is one of the most fervent adherents to it.

Where is the attention deficit?

The scientific discovery that so-called "Attention Deficit Disorder" may be inherited by some children has of course now let many millions of parents off the hook for their poorly behaved and anti-social children. Some were reported as being relieved they weren't to blame, as if they were also relieved of responsibility for how their children behave (although a cruel person would argue if it is in the DNA then one shouldn't replicate it) or perform at school.

It is a measure of these times for parents to evade responsibility for their children and their actions. It can be seen in the flippant approach of far too many (men in particular) who don't want to carry the responsibility for their own reproduction. It has long been timeless for teachers to notice the parents who refused to accept responsibility for their children being disruptive or violent at school. I recall my parents being told at parent-teacher evenings they need not have bothered coming along, because the parents the teachers really want to meet are the ones who never turn up - the ones who prioritise TV, the pub, their friends or their latest shag over their own kids.

Whilst undoubtedly medical science will continue to discover bio-chemical and genetic bases for all sorts of behaviour (I await the undoubted discovery that some pedophiles, sadists and masochists are born that way), the mistake is to think that there is nothing that can be done by means other than medication.

As Theodore Dalrymple writes in the Daily Telegraph, the real "attention deficit" is from parents, in particular fathers. He says "far more British children have a television in their bedroom than a biological father living at home throughout their childhood".

The destructive legacy of this is seen in boys growing up looking for male role models in all the wrong places (in the case of some ethnic minorities, gang culture in the teens is rife at both supplying and seeking out fatherless boys), and girls who learn from a certain age the main way many women get male attention, and so seek "daddy" figures of not quite the kind they need. The ease by which attention lacking young people now have communication means to pursue these surrogate father figures who prey upon them is largely ignored, and is probably too shocking for the middle classes to truly accept.

Far easier for some to blame their genes, far easier for politicians on the left to say it is poverty.

Far harder to confront that a combination of the welfare state, the post-modernist abstinence from individual responsibility regarding breeding and the lack of promotion of life values is what is the issue.

Ireland's forthcoming default

Two article today present antidotes to the typical leftwing "f'ing bankers" reaction to the foolish decision by the Irish state to bail out its most profligate bank.

City AM's Allister Heath blames the Euro for feeding Irish banks with low interest fiat money, when interest rates should have been far higher. The Euro, reflecting the dominance of German economic conditions, wouldn't reflect the boom of Ireland.

The Adam Smith Institute takes things further, blaming the ridiculous 100% government guarantee of deposits at Irish banks for encouraging profligacy and costing taxpayers an absolute fortune (and removing any interest in people considering how viable their banks really are). It calls on the Irish government to end this guarantee, slash state spending and withdraw from the Euro.

The fear being that the Irish state may default itself, which of course would render all its borrowing as junk, but would mean the state would need to cut back to what it can afford.

Meanwhile, if you wanted to retire in Ireland and buy a house, now is the time.

It's quite a jump to the left

After losing this year's election, the British Labour Party purged Gordon Brown, as he proved himself to be one of a long list of Labour leaders who only lose elections (he joins Neil Kinnock, Michael Foot, James Callaghan, Hugh Gaitskell as post war Labour leaders who never won an election).  It has been on the search for a new leader, and had five candidates get nominated.  

Only one was a woman, demonstrating once again that the party that claims to do so much for women, can't bring itself to get led by one, and Diane Abbott (the first black woman to be elected to the House of Commons) came last, not helped by being the most leftwing candidate by far.  It is telling that the winner said patronisingly that she was "right to stand", if only to avoid Labour looking embarrassingly like what it hates.  She and unionist Andy Burnham were not serious contenders.

Ed Balls, former Education Secretary, was a Brownite, and came third, but the real battle was the bizarre spectacle of two brothers contesting for the leadership, each with a different taste to offer.

The Milibands (as comedian Andy Hamilton quipped he wasn't used to the new metric politicians) were raised by Marxists.  The difference is that David Miliband, the older brother, grew up and was strongly affiliated with Tony Blair.  Ed Miliband, the baby, preferred Labour of the 1980s. 

Ed Miliband was an intern to Tony Benn, one of Britain's most ludicrous Marxist cabinet Ministers.  Benn once argued that the British government should nationalise the 50 largest companies in the country - in the 1970s, having been Secretary of State for Industry.  A Marxist dad, a Marxist mentor, it was little surprise that in the 1990s he started writing speeches for Harriet Harman and then Gordon Brown.

It is also little surprise that he won the Labour leadership for only one reason, the trade union movement overwhelmingly backed him.  You see the British Labour Party leadership race is decided in part by the rank and file, in part by MPs and MEPs and in part by "affiliates", which is code for the unions claiming weight by assuming that members of the union are Labour supporters.

The 1.3% margin over David Miliband means Ed is not the choice of MPs or Labour members.  More importantly it means Labour is sliding back to whence it came - the politics of class warfare, wealth envy and hatred of capitalism.

Ed Miliband wants to keep a 50% top rate of income tax, he wants new taxes on banks (all banks, whether bailed out by the state or not) to reduce the deficit.  He has indicated he wants to slow down the reduction in the budget deficit (remember this is the rate of overspending, not the level of debt, he just wants to grow debt more slowly), he wants to grow welfare and chase more jobs overseas with a new minimum "living wage" and most disturbingly he wants a High Pay Commission to regulate private sector pay.

How much of this was to get the unions on side or not is unclear, what is clear is that even after being elected as Labour leader he continues to trot out the Gramscian rewriting of history that covers up Labour's role in the decimation of the British economy.

The story told is:

-  The banks weren't regulated, they acted recklessly and all needed bailing out.

-  Gordon Brown cleverly saved the world the country by saving the banks, and by running a huge deficit to keep the economy functioning;

-  Without a big government borrowing money and spending it, the economy would collapse.

The truth of fiat money, Labour riding off the back of consumers borrowing and spending and speculating on property, that only three banks were bailed out by the state, that bank deposits for over 95% of the population were protected anyway, that Labour had run budget deficits almost continually whilst in power, that Labour had wasted fortunes of money on bureaucracies and vanity projects (the Olympics will be the last one) that destroy wealth not create it, and finally that Labour's goal of reducing inequalities was hindered by the promotion of a welfare dependent society, with state housing, state jobs, health and education, all are whitewashed over.

The best that can be said about the last 13 years is that they could have been worse.  That Labour still supported privatisation in government tells you how much more mature it was compared to New Zealand Labour.   However, the only reason Labour gets away with it is the cultural dominance of the BBC which happily perpetuates a  centre-left view of the economy, and the ineptness of the Conservative Party and the business sector, both of which are scared of backing capitalism or in the latter case, rather keen to engage in  continued corporatism.

Allister Heath in City AM is particularly worried that the trend has now moved clearly leftward, on Miliband:

"He supports high tax not primarily because he thinks it will raise revenue but to punish the better-off. Ken Livingstone wants to go even further. Even though bonuses are already mostly taxed at a marginal rate of 51.5 per cent, Miliband wants to increase the bank tax, reintroduce a bonus tax and slap a Tobin tax on financial transactions. He believes in the need for the government to regulate pay levels in the private sector. He supports a new graduate tax."

He concludes with a bleak forecast:

"There is no place in Miliband’s intellectual framework for the idea, shared by Thatcher, John Major and Blair alike that too much tax and too much red tape is counter-productive, reduces effort and investment, chases away capital and talent, impoverishes the nation and destroys the public finances. Instead, to Miliband, the private sector can be taxed and beaten and throttled – and it will always come back for more. This view of the world is shared almost entirely by the coalition’s Vince Cable wing. The two men appear to agree on everything apart from the budget deficit, about which Miliband is in denial.


The opposition hates the City and wants to tax everything that moves; Cable agrees; the Tories are too scared to resist. The public, which has not been exposed to a proper defence of capitalism for years, wants to lash out. It is therefore becoming increasingly difficult to remain optimistic about Britain’s long-term future. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear for the UK’s jobs and prosperity."

I am slightly more optimistic, as I think the Vince Cable wing of the government is just about releasing steam from the left of the Liberal Democrats with no real substances behind it. I also think the British public wont stomach the Labour Party of the 1980s today any more than it did then. However a decent defence of capitalism is rare in the UK, with only the Adam Smith Institute and City AM being consistent on this.

Is it time for a UK TeaParty to bolster the Coalition to cut spending?

The bleating as the tit is taken from the mouths of the dependent

As the UK Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition undertakes its comprehensive spending review (which unlike that in New Zealand is about finding opportunities to cut spending almost across the board), more and more of the absurdities of the British welfare state are appearing.

The latest case to cause bleating from the "government is good" left of the Labour Party are payments of mortgage interest to the unemployed.  Yes, you see if you are eligible for the unemployment benefit in the UK, you too are protected from not making your mortgage payments by the state paying for the interest on your mortgage!

So you're not exactly poor, you have property and you expect other taxpayers, property owners and others to maintain your "investment"?   The effect on this is to keep property values inflated about true market value.   It disincentivises people from taking out insurance on mortgage repayments or income, and keeps them as homeowners when some would ultimately decide to bail out, putting their homes on the market lowering prices.   It penalises first time home buyers once again, because it is part of New Labour's programme of middle class welfare, exacerbating the housing price bubble and making it more difficult to people who actually do want to own their own home.

However, the coalition didn't announce it was cancelling this absurd benefit, but reducing the interest rate which would be paid.  You see the state has been paying 6% across the board in interest to mortgage holders on the unemployment benefit even though floating mortgage rates are currently tracking below 4%.   It isn't just welfare, it's a future taxpayer (public debt) funded windfall!   The government simply wants to reduce it to the prevailing market rate.

Still there are plenty moaning about how "unfair" this is, the same who completely ignore where the money comes from (borrow it) and ignoring the impact of being "kind" with other people's money has on those whose money it was in the first place, or on the markets they distort.

The comprehensive spending review wont abolish the welfare state, but it hopefully will completely destroy the middle class components of it.  The universal child benefit (or "you've been breeding, congratulations, here's some other people's money to reward you for having a fuck"), the winter fuel allowance (or "you're old and you forgot it gets cold in winter, so you blew your money on that trip to Barbados"), the "freedom bus pass" (or you haven't even reached pension age, but you're earning a 6 figure sum so how about getting half of your daily commute for free) etc etc, all need to be severely curtailed.

The worst deceit of the last 13 years of New Labour has been how it has used stealth to get so many of the British public dependent on state handouts for part of their income, funded almost entirely on borrowing from their children and grandchildren.   Well Gordon Brown's fiscal profligacy chickens have come home, they can't be evaded and the growth of that debt must be curtailed.

It is one thing to claim the welfare state is about addressing poverty, but it has become a form of insurance to cover people's investment and lifestyle choices.  That should now be coming to an end.